Gridserve Brand Guidelines: Electric Forecourts & the Electric Highway Bought From Ecotricity

Solar farms first, then forecourts.

Gridserve, which styles its name in capitals as GRIDSERVE, dates its own story to 2014. Companies House records GRIDSERVE Sustainable Energy Limited — the company named in its 2020 announcements — as incorporated in September 2017, alongside a holding company formed the same month, with a registered office in Swindon. Its first big public landmark came later, in Essex.

The company first described itself as a sustainable energy business. In April 2020 it announced a partnership with Hitachi Capital (UK), which provided a loan facility for projects including hybrid solar farms in Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire and a forecourt then about to open near Braintree, in Essex, with space for 24 vehicles to charge at once at up to 350kW. The plan, as set out then, was to pair solar generation and battery storage with a network of what it calls Electric Forecourts®: charging stations laid out like petrol forecourts, with a shop and somewhere to sit. Later releases called this its “Sun-to-Wheel” model.

Braintree opened in 2020, the company’s timeline says, and Gridserve presents it as the first site of its kind. Further Electric Forecourts followed at Norwich in 2022, Gatwick in 2023 and Stevenage in 2024. In July 2026 Transport + Energy reported the opening of the fifth, at Markham Vale by junction 29A of the M1, with 39 ultra-rapid bays from launch, three of them drive-through bays for larger vehicles, each fitted with ABB units capable of 400kW. The retail building there is suspended above the main charging area and carries 138 rooftop solar panels, the magazine reported, with a Costa Coffee, a Little Fresh shop and a lounge.

Buying the Electric Highway.

The step that made Gridserve a national network came in 2021. On 8 June that year the energy company Ecotricity confirmed the sale of its Electric Highway, the motorway charging network it had started about a decade earlier, to Gridserve, in a release that Gridserve republished. Gridserve said in a later statement that it completed the acquisition that month.

Three weeks later, on 30 June 2021, Gridserve relaunched the network as the GRIDSERVE Electric Highway. It said it would replace almost 300 older Ecotricity chargers at more than 150 locations, on motorways and at IKEA stores, with new units taking contactless payment, and build more than 50 high-power motorway hubs. The first, at Moto’s Rugby services, had opened in April 2021 with twelve 350kW chargers beside twelve Tesla Superchargers. The same release announced a new investor, The Rise Fund, TPG’s impact investing platform, alongside Hitachi Capital UK.

The deal drew regulatory attention. Shortly after the acquisition, Gridserve said, the Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation into exclusivity clauses in the contracts it had taken over with three motorway service area operators. In March 2022 the CMA accepted commitments from Gridserve, including shortening the exclusivity to about five years, and closed the case without any decision or admission of a breach, according to Gridserve’s statement of 8 March 2022.

In August 2022 Infracapital, the infrastructure equity arm of M&G, invested in the company, joining TPG Rise and Mitsubishi HC Capital UK, Gridserve announced. In June 2026 Transport + Energy named TPG Rise Climate and Infracapital as its long-term investors, with Daniel Kunkel as chief executive.

Design and documentation.

EV charging networks sell something drivers cannot see: electricity delivered in a car park or at a service area. Their identities therefore lean on what can be pictured — the charger units, the buildings and shelters around them, the app and the network map — and on the names they give to different kinds of site. Gridserve, for example, sorts its network into Electric Forecourts®, Electric Super Hubs on motorways and Electric Retail Hubs, while Osprey defines a hub as a site with six or more ultra-rapid bays.

Hardware is often shown by name. Networks publish the makers of their chargers and the power ratings they quote for them: Osprey lists units from Circontrol, Wallbox, Tritium and Kempower on its chargers page, and Gridserve has installed ABB units capable of 400kW at its newer sites, according to Transport + Energy. Speeds in this guide are given only as each network or a dated report states them.

The app and the map carry much of the brand. Network maps use colour as a key — Osprey’s marks its fastest sites with orange pins — and apps handle payment, receipts and membership schemes; in 2026 Osprey added a feature that starts a charge as soon as a car is plugged in. Photographs of hubs and forecourts illustrate the networks’ news pages and the partner announcements carried by the trade press.

The other audience is the landlord. Gridserve and Osprey both keep pages for landowners and partners, because their sites are hosted by supermarkets, retail parks, pubs, councils and motorway service areas. This guide sets out what can be checked about each network — who founded it, who owns or funds it, and how it names and presents its sites — and marks clearly what rests on a company’s own word.

Forecourts, Super Hubs and freight.

Today the network has three kinds of site, by the company’s own description: Electric Forecourts®, Electric Super Hubs on motorways and Electric Retail Hubs at shopping destinations. In June 2026 Transport + Energy reported that it spanned more than 1,600 ultra-rapid charging bays at more than 200 locations on the UK’s strategic road network. A Super Hub that opened at Moto Lymm on the M6 in May 2026 had 24 bays capable of 400kW from launch, the magazine reported, and Gridserve described itself there as the UK’s most-used EV charging network, a claim that is its own. Its mission line is to “make EV easy.”

The company has added a driver app, launched in 2024, and a membership scheme, GRIDSERVE Plus, launched in 2025, which Transport + Energy described in May 2026 as giving members a discount on charging sessions across its locations. Live charger availability appears in the app and on navigation services including Zapmap, Transport + Energy reported in July 2026. Its timeline also lists ChargeSafe accreditation in 2025 and an Innovation and Operations Centre opened in 2024.

Gridserve has also moved into freight. In January 2026 Transport + Energy reported the opening of what it called the UK’s first public charging hubs for electric heavy goods vehicles, under Gridserve’s Electric Freightway programme, at Extra Baldock and Moto Exeter. The programme is funded through the Department for Transport’s Zero Emission HGV and Infrastructure Demonstrator scheme and involves a consortium of 25 hauliers and truck makers; the bays are drive-through, with signage placed for the higher driving position of a lorry cab.

For a design guide, Gridserve shows how a charging company can borrow the language of the petrol station — the forecourt, the shop, the motorway stop — and carry one name in capitals across motorway hubs, retail sites and a freight programme. Compare Osprey, another British ultra-rapid network, and InstaVolt, another UK charging network. For this guide we use a deep green and a bright lime with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Gridserve’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.